Photographer Jonathan Crosby

Good friend and world-class climber Mike Foley humored me with a photo concept I’ve been wanting to do for some time now. Thanks to Spenser Heaps for helping out with the lights.

It’s oppressively hot in Athens so I thought I’d post something from my winter interning at the Aspen Daily News. The frame is of a gnarly crash at the Adaptive World Cup downhill event at Buttermilk Mountain in Aspen, CO.

Up until this point, Aspen has been struggling with an unusually low snowpack. The Roaring Fork Valley was operating at about 70% snowpack average, and that personally feels like a generous statistic. My rock skis were the choice ski all season because dodging rocks and gravel wasn’t uncommon. Luckly, in the past 3 or so days, we were blessed with 3 feet of fresh snow. Although it was pretty heavy snow, it was well needed and breathed life into town.

The town is now awake. I got to the gondola at Ajax before it opens at 9 A.M. in hopes of getting first bucket and was surprised to see the line weaving out the corral and down the stairs. It was worth the wait. Over the next few days I skied myself into to the ground. My body hates me, stairs are the enemy, and the Ritz-Carlton hot tub next door is my saviour.

One great this about being the winter intern at the Aspen Daily News was the opportunity to photograph the ESPN Winter X Games 14. Although the access was very limited despite having a press pass, it was interesting to see some of the behind-the-scenes operations and was also a new experience to cover such a large event. It was a long and very cold 4 days but I walked away with a few frames I like and learned new things about the industry. I’ll be honest, I hadn’t shot sports action in a year or 2 so it was a good challenge to get back in the saddle and produce some good imagery for the paper.